Dymock artist Barbara Davis was an student with John Lennon in Liverpool

Always keeping a keen, even a fierce eye on rural planning issues, from the encroachment of polytunnels through to the identification, preservation and mapping of paths known and used by her beloved Dymock Poets, her cottage home at Ryton was the garden location for The Garland Hut.

This served as both an information hub and shelter for visitors, particularly those interested in the area’s impressive literary history.

A good friend, Chris Bligh said: “We had something special in Barbara; fifty years of dogged artistic reportage and research.

“The sum of her half century years living at Ryton was more than daffodils, a remembered poet and singing in the choir.”

She was a strong believer in the community and the value of rural heritage, and she was the implacable opponent of anything which seemed to threaten the local landscape and scene.

Her character, however, was genial and welcoming.

Mrs Davis would often serve free tea and cakes to visitors while giving accounts of Dymock Poets, such as Edward Thomas and Robert Frost, as if they were still living and writing nearby; and her boundless enthusiasm was infectious.

The Reporter understands that Mrs Davis, who was 81, had been ill for the past year, but that her enthusiasm remained undiminished until the end.

Often providing illustrations of local scenes for Dymock’s Windcross Magazine, Mrs Davis was trained in art at the Liverpool College of Art, where John Lennon was a fellow student.

She once explained that she found the future Beatle slightly un-nerving, because of his tendency to stare: that is until she realised he was incredibly short-sighted but too vain, as a young man, to wear his spectacles.

Mrs Davis died at her home on November 27, and her well-attended funeral took place at St Mary’s Church in Dymock, on December 6, officiated over by the Revds Andrew Perry and Richard Franklin. She leaves behind a son, Hamish.